Talk:Jack Dromey

POV dispute

Is it wise to selectively apply parts of the bigger story Cash for peerages into the biography of the individuals involved?

for example, the Diane Abbott quote, while important, is already in the main piece and may not add much in the Dromey bio. There is also risk that the entire saga becomes paraphrased in Dromey's (and others) pages?

Any thoughts?

I agree. The article is a hatchet job: opinionated, unsourced, and needs a complete rewrite. Have added a POV tag. -- BrownHairedGirl 10:05, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Further Information

Jack Dromey married Harriet Harman, Labour MP for Camberwell and Peckham. Someone may like to add this.

Three

Note that there are three called George Ward

Twitter?

Need mention of his embarrassing tweets. This is his second time doing this and it has made the national papers.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10464348/Labour-frontbencher-favourited-explicit-gay-porn-tweets.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2511016/Harriet-Harmans-MP-husband-Jack-Dromey-adds-gay-porn-Tweet-favourites.html

hmm? 31.185.188.87 (talk) 12:25, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it was just a technical mix-up, but even if it wasn't, I suggest that this was a private matter between him and his wife, not the sort of tittle-tattle appropriate for an encyclopedia (and anyway we don't regard the Daily Mail as a reliable source). PatGallacher (talk) 21:39, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with PatGallacher. I'm surprised the Torygraph would sully itself with such trivial tabloid sensationalism. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:54, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Selective schools

It may well be the policy of the Labour Party to support comprehensive schools, but I am not sure that it is against policy to condemn those who send their children to grammar schools where they exist. Some people might consider that it may not always be realistic to expect people to resist social issues like this on an individual basis. PatGallacher (talk) 19:30, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

It wasn't so much a matter of policy as of charges of hypocrisy though this really belongs in Harman's article as she was in the Shadow Cabinet at the time. The couple sent their elder son to a grant maintained school despite it being Labour policy to abolish them and there was a big row. Then the Blairs did the same and there came a bigger row. Then Dromey and Harman set their younger son to a grammar school despite the party policy being firmly opposed to selection and there was a huge row that turned out to be Blair's biggest crisis as Leader of the Opposition.

It should be noted that neither couple was living in a city or county where the entire school system is selective and there were no comprehensives available so these weren't cases of opposition politician parents who couldn't wait for their party to come to power and change the school system in time (in contrast to, say, Rosie Duffield in Kent) but rather politicians choosing something for themselves that they wanted to deny others.

Of course one of Harman's biggest critics was Diane Abbott who some years later managed to outdo her on this. Timrollpickering (talk) 20:30, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

So (at least some) sources should be easy to find for all this (well, for the Dromey part anyway)? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:14, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Possibly so, but this ought to be properly sourced. PatGallacher (talk) 21:15, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't recall much public criticism of Dromey who was pretty low profile then. There was huge criticism of Harman but the problem is that it was in a period that's something of a black hole online - recent enough to not yet be well covered in historic pieces but old enough to predate widespread online news media in the UK and few papers have put much pre internet stuff online. The main contemporary stuff I can find with Google is this in the Independent and this in the Irish Times. Otherwise you'd have to dig into the newspaper archives and various books on the early development of New Labour. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:31, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure the article needs to any any more than it currently does. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:52, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Place of birth

London Borough of Brent did not exist in 1948? Most non-recent sources give just "London". His record at FreeBMD says his birth was registered in Hampstead. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:09, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

The Brent article says this:"Brent was formed in 1965 from the area of the former Municipal Borough of Wembley and Municipal Borough of Willesden of Middlesex." In 2018 Dromey said himself on Twitter: "I was born in Kilburn of Irish parents which was predominantly Irish." And both The Irish Times and The Irish Post follow this. The former quotes him, again on Twitter: "Born in County Kilburn, I am proud son of an Irish navvy from #Cork and a nurse from #Tipperary who met in the Galtymore dance hall in Crickelwood Broadway." Martinevans123 (talk) 10:34, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

So, assuming we leave Kilburn aside, as a bit of Dromey's own "poetic licence", Brent is not wrong as such, just anachronistic. Would just "London", "North West London" or Willesden be better? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:33, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Or perhaps Hampstead, as that is a different registration district to Willesden. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2022 (UTC)